Breakthrough
Episode 9 of Invasion begins in WDC’s war room where President Benya is informed about the seismic zones. We see various spots around the globe being hit by an earthquake when Nikhil goes into the pit with the alien. It is revealed that all the areas on the radar are actually non-alien zones. This potentially means that those areas are also infested with aliens. They could literally be anywhere using their cloaking technology.
Mitsuki has been working day and night to track the signal of the ship. After having destroyed the portal, her work has gotten even harder. Even though she is worked up, it is almost as if she is connected to the alien entity. She hears Hinata calling out for her and follows the voice outside. When she looks up, Mitsuki sees a flock of birds flying in the pattern of infinity. Suddenly, the ground below her starts glowing and Mitsuki’s mind harkens back to the time she saw Caspar calling out for her. She deduces that “finding him is the key.”
Caspar is once again rendered unconscious by Esmee and Gabrielle, who want to continue their experiments. This time, Caspar wakes up in a hurry and explains he saw a “bright light” that the aliens fought to protect. The WDC is getting anxious for answers. Aneesha’s subplot is back and it is suggested through her interaction with Clark that they are attracted to each other. Sarah is shown being tested by the military at the Idabel Project but it is nothing sinister.
They want more information about the alien shard that was being tracked. Caspar and the special kids agree that they heard “the other” – who is Mitsuki – and that finding her can lead to another clue. But what if Caspar goes into a coma again? Jamila proposes that she go with Caspar to keep him tethered to this world. Monty resists and this time, Caspar outs his secret crush on Jamila. Clark and the other members of the Movement sneak into the Idabel using the remaining soldiers from the other camp as decoys.
In a rather tender moment, Caspar apologizes to Monty. He goes on about how the group risked their lives to find him and Caspar hasn’t been reciprocating. Monty once again pleads with him not to drag Jamila in with him and Caspar seems to agree. The Movement members spread out in the field to find Sarah. They create distractions using guns and explosions to drive out the soldiers from the base. Aneesha and Clark break into the rabbit hole and run into Rosy and Trev, who are imprisoned. Trev recognizes Sarah and vows to help Anesha find her.
One of the soldiers posted outside spots Trev and starts shooting. He asks Aneesha to give him the gun but she is hesitant. He holds them off as Aneesha finds Sarah. When Caspar confronts Jamila with the issue of her going with him, she goes on about how she keeps making the choice to stick with him, unconsciously. But something has changed inside of him that scares her. It is decided that Caspar goes alone. There is tension around the Amazon project as Mitsuki goes further into the forest chasing the glowing light.
It is almost as if the ship has come alive again and it is reacting to Mitsuki’s footsteps. The deeper she goes, Mitsuki finds that the aliens have spread their network everywhere. She picks out two chords that glow from the ground and finds herself transported into the world of the aliens. She is surprised to find Caspar in there with her. They recognize each other from when Mitsuki played “Space Cadet” in the box through the portal. They deduce that the place they’re in is that place where the aliens connect since they’re a hive; all but one.
Mitsuki and Caspar both wake up in their respective locations with a gasp. They now know where all the portals lead to: the mother ship. The episode ends with a sinister image as a ship, presumably the hive, starts to uncloak and reveal itself in the sky.
The Episode Review
Finally, we have a well-coordinated episode that finally gives weight to the story in Season 2. The way everything comes together is both ironic and poetic. Has it come too late? Definitely. The egregiously long buildup seemed neverending. But it has come at the right time to warrant another go for the creatives at another season. It temptingly prepares us for the finale, which could also potentially see the humans make a definitive move against the aliens.
I also found the subplot with Jamila and the kids well put together. It was the first time that I got through without rolling my eyes. Caspar has been grossly unutilized this season. Being arguably the most important character in the story, we needed to see more of him. I can’t understand the direction that Aneesha’s character has been taken either.
The same applies to Luke. That subplot has been problematic from the beginning and beyond redemption now. Many things I cannot get my head around but it is what it is.
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Episode Rating
(3)
At the end of the episode, the mothership is shown uncloacked, so if it can be located, it could, if not protected by a force-field, be targeted and shot down by air strikes like the other alien ships have been previously, but the WDC might be tempted not to launch such an attack because they think that there exist cloaked extraterrestrial entities that could fight back by triggering catastrophic seismic events all over the world.
On the other hand, in the previous episode, Mitsuki discovered that the alien entity in the spaceship could act as a teleportation system, so in theory, it could be used to transport and detonate a nuke on the other side, although it is questionable whether the location apparently suitable for extraterrestrial biological life (perhaps the aliens’ home planet ) where Nikhil was physically transported through the portal in the spaceship is the same one as the one where Mitsuki mentally traveled through her connection to the mind space in the forest.
When watching a flock of birds flying in the pattern of infinity (the same way Miksuki had noticed before finding an access point to the alien hive mind), Luke said to Aneesha:
There’s something out there.
I don’t know what it is.
It feels different.
suggesting he is not speaking of the shard or hunter-killers but the manifestation of an unknown presence, emanating from either another alien species, a dissident faction of the same alien species or even Earth herself following the Gaia Theory, possibly friendly and willing to help humans in their fight against the alien invaders, or perhaps Luke is refering to what’s in the mysterious crater.
When connected to the alien hive mind, Caspar said he saw a “bright light” but couldn’t go beyond, as if the aliens fought to protect it, but after his meeting with Mitsuki in the mind space he could see the emitting tower in the mothership they were hidding from him, suggesting that the access point used by Mitsuki in the Amazon forest may not be controlled by the alien invaders, but unknown friendly forces related to the “bright light” and present in the so-called alien-free zones, trying to take advantage of the diversion created by Nikhil’s attack on the portal to break in the alien hive mind which retaliated by triggering earthquakes.